


After the Affair

by nothingeverlost



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (TV)
Genre: post episode
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-24
Updated: 2015-08-24
Packaged: 2018-04-16 23:20:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4643844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nothingeverlost/pseuds/nothingeverlost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I take a deep breath. I’ve never been very good at confession. “I don’t know what to do now.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	After the Affair

**Author's Note:**

> This is for the 'beginnings' challenge at Network Command. It's a post ep for the episode 'The Minus X Affair.' There's something about the not-so-innocent Leslie that grabbed me and hasn't let go.
> 
> Originally posted March 2008

“Are we done?” I grind out a cigarette in an ashtray already brimming over with butts and ash, and tap my high-heeled foot on the floor. I need this to be over soon. It seems like we have been sitting in this dismal gray room for hours now, with Napoleon taking notes and confirming details as I told my side of the whole messy affair. 

That’s what he called it. An affair: as if being drugged and robbing an army installation and watching your mother die was the same as having dinner and drinks with a handsome man. I guess drinking and handsome men are what got me into this in the first place.

“We’re done.” Napoleon flips the pages of the notebook back and sets the pen on top of the pad. His hand now free, the first thing he does is straighten his tie. He does that a lot, you know. I wonder if it was hard for him to be tied to that chair in Arthur Rollo's study, not able to straighten his tie or fix his cuffs. “Leslie, I just want to say again that I’m sorry about your...”

“Thanks.” I cut him off. I don’t want to hear it again. My mother is dead, and nothing anyone says can change that. Nothing can change what she’d done either, good or bad. 

Clutching my handbag I rise from my seat. “It’s been swell, but I’ve got places to go and people to see.”

“I’d be pleased to...”

I leave the small room without finding out what Napoleon has to offer.

“You are leaving?” Illya Kuryakin stands in the hallway, leaning against one of the gray walls. Gray, gray, gray. Don’t these people know that such a thing as color exists? A little yellow paint and this place... On second thought, paint probably wouldn’t make much of a difference. Maybe gunmetal gray is the color of secrets, and no matter what they painted it, the color would simply fade away into shadows. I tug at the strap of my beaded dress, suddenly aware of how out of place I am here. 

“Yes.” I’m getting out of here, and as quickly as I possibly can. I need to remember that there is such a thing as color, and return to a world where secret agents and crime and magic pills are confined to television shows.

“Where will you go?” Without asking permission, he walks beside me down the corridor. I wonder if he’s merely curious, or if I rate an official escort. What a hoot, that anyone could consider me a danger.

“I don’t know.” He probably means tonight, but I consider the question on a grander scale. I’ve spent eleven years running away from my mother; now that she’s gone I don’t know where to go. I rub my forehead with the palm of my hand, trying to clear away the fog. “Wherever I can find a party. Back to Acapulco, probably.” I hold my head high and try to put an extra sway in my hips as I walk down the long gray corridor. 

“Is that really what you want?” We’ve reached the elevator now, and he looks at me with eyes that are too blue and too knowing.

“Leslie Bennett, party girl. It’s who I am.” 

I ran away from my very proper Swiss finishing school when I was sixteen because a boy I met on the ski slopes invited me to a party in France. The seething telegram I received from my mother had been a bonus. Seven years later and the party hasn’t ended yet. Or maybe it did and I missed last call.

“It doesn’t have to be.” He speaks plainly, his only expression a single raised eyebrow. 

“A leopard doesn’t change its spots, Mr. Kuryakin.” 

Leopards are solitary animals. Last year an Indian princeling had invited my friends and myself to an African safari. I had awoken one night to a horrible roar. Ishanti told me it was a leopard, alone, hunting its prey.

“True, but even a leopard can adjust to new surroundings.” 

I think of the leopard I heard in Africa, and then the one I saw in a Taiwan zoo a few years ago. I’m not sure I want new surroundings.

The elevator doors open to the garage. Rows and rows of boring practical cars are parked here, with only one pretty little convertible in the group. Illya leads me past the shiny red car and holds open the door of a yellow cab. I wrinkle my nose in displeasure, but he doesn’t seem to notice. It’s strange to sit in the front seat of a cab, just as it is strange to be seated on the right side and not driving. I may be American by birth, but I haven’t lived here since I was twelve.

“This isn’t the way to the airport. Are you taking me to a hotel?” Those seem like the most reasonable options: a plane tonight or sleep and a plane tomorrow. I’m not sure which I prefer, or if I even care.

“No.” The traffic is light, for being in the city, but his eyes don’t leave the road.

“To your flat?” I hope not, unless his taste in furnishings is drastically different than his taste in clothes. Though, if he has a place to sleep, I won’t complain; at least not until morning.

“Definitely not.” He seems offended at the idea. I cross my arms and stick my lower lip out just a little. Men never turn me down when I suggest their flats: not unless they’re married. Illya doesn’t seem to notice the pout.

“Then I hope we are going to a bar. I could use a vodka martini.” 

It had been two, maybe three, days since I’d had a drink. Not since the jasmine garden at Rollo’s; long enough ago that I had thought my mother was a villain and Thrush a thrilling idea. 

Maybe I should just make Illya pull over. There has to be a bar nearby. We are still in Manhattan, and if the rumors are right there’s a bar on almost every block.

“Not a bar, but I can almost guarantee you a drink,” he tells me.

Apparently we have arrived wherever we are going, because Illya parks parallel to the curb and walks around the side of the car to open the passenger door for me. A little old fashioned, but I let him. He’s very European in his manner- not like the fast crowd that I travel in, but more like ancient European architecture; a little bit out of his time. 

We are parked in front of an apartment building. A pretty swanky one, with a uniformed doorman. I’ll bet the best flats have a view of the park. The doorman seems to know Illya, waving to him as we walk past. 

“You come here often?” I ask.

“Not for some time.” He presses the button for the top floor. The penthouse? Not bad. When we reach the floor he knocks on the only door with three swift raps.

“Go away Illya. I’m not interested in playing bait again.” When the door opens, with the safety chain still latched, I can’t see anything except for one brown eye and some blond hair. By the bland look on Illya’s face, he’s not surprised at the cool reception.

“I am not here about an assignment, Marion. I assure you Gervaise is still where she belongs, behind bars.”

“Why should I believe you?” The voice is obviously female, probably young, though it’s hard to tell. If she knows Illya because of some previous ‘affair’, I don’t blame her for keeping the door closed. For all that they saved my life, I don’t care if I see another UNCLE agent, and I don’t ever want to see the inside of that grey tomb of an office again.

“I give you my word,” Illya says. Apparently the woman – Marion - believes him, because after the door closes briefly it opens again, this time sans chain. The woman is indeed young, though probably a few years older than I am, or not; looks can be deceiving. She’s dressed simply, but fashionably, in black slacks and a patterned blouse.

“Your partner’s not hiding around the corner, is he?” she asks warily.

“The only person here besides myself is Leslie.”

“She’s not an UNCLE agent?” She looks at me suspiciously and I laugh. One quick glance and anyone can tell I don’t belong at UNCLE.

“Leslie is a friend,” Illya says. I raise my eyebrow at the blatant lie. I don’t see why he would consider me a friend. Honestly, I don’t understand why he brought me here instead of walking me to the secret entrance at UNCLE and slamming the dressing room wall in my face. “She needs a place to stay for a few days.”

“One night,” I correct him. I’m not really planning on sticking around. “And I can stay at a hotel.”

“Her mother was killed by Thrush today.” Illya ignores me, walking into the penthouse and, apparently, expecting me to follow. I do. It’s a nice place, funky and brightly colored, but not cheap. The furniture shows clean classic lines, the vase in the middle of the table looks to be Baccarat crystal, and the view from the open balcony doors is to die for.

“Oh, you poor, poor dear.” She hugs me, this stranger. I don’t return the embrace, but I don’t pull away either. There’s no point in alienating the host. “Oh, how horrible.”

“She can stay?” Illya looks at Marion, his question sounding more like a statement of fact.

“Of course she can stay. She looks almost done in right now.” Marion leads me to the couch, and I’m happy to sit down. She’s right, I am done in. I don’t like being so transparent, though.

“Just for tonight,” I repeat. I wonder if Illya’s staying the night, too. I can’t quite figure out what’s between him and Marion. He said he hadn’t been here in a while, but he moves around the flat comfortably, checking windows and doors, looking for all the world like he’s gone through this same routine before. And Marion, despite her hesitation to let us in, seems glad to see him.

“But you have to stay longer than one night. I’m having a party tomorrow, and everyone will be here. Unless you don’t like parties?”

“She like parties,” Illya answers for me. He says “parties” almost like it’s a dirty word.

“Good. Now that that is settled, let’s all have a nightcap, then I can show Leslie her room.” Marion moved over to the corner of the room where a rather extensive bar was set up. Finally, a drink.

“Nothing for me, thank you. I have to go back to the office.” Illya fiddles with the lock at the balcony door one last time before heading for the front door.

“You can’t stay for just one itty bitty little nightcap?” Marion asked.

“No.”

“Fine. Go then. I should have known you couldn’t sit for more than five minutes and pretend to be human.” She sounded mostly resigned, but still a little hurt. 

“Tomorrow, if work does not interfere, I will come have a drink at your party.”

“Promise?” She looks a little like a puppy dog when she looks at him.

“I will try.” He carefully avoids making a promise, I notice. “Lock the door behind me.”

“Wait.” Illya has one foot out of the flat when I run for the door and lean against the wall. I barely know this man, but he’s the only familiar thing here - one of the only people in the country that I know - and he’s about to leave.

“Did you forget something?”

“I don’t know...” I take a deep breath. I’ve never been very good at confession. “I don’t know what to do now.”

“Marion makes a good martini. I would suggest drinking one, and then getting some sleep.”

“And tomorrow?” I was scared of tomorrow, and the day after that. Thousands of tomorrows stretched out with nothing to fill them, the black hole that was my life.

“Tomorrow Marion is throwing a party; she’s famous for them. If this one is like the others it will last a week, at least.”

“Is that why you brought me here? For a party?” Leslie Bennet, party girl, I had told him. Somehow I was disappointed that he had taken me at my word.

“The party is like a child’s security blanket, something familiar from the old life to bring into the new. But I brought you here because you need someone to talk to, and Marion will understand. If you’ll allow her to, she’ll help you. And maybe you can help her, too.”

“What could she need that I can help with?” Never in my life has anyone needed me, unless it was to make up a foursome for tennis or bridge.

“I think she’s lonely,” he says, more to himself than to me.

For just a moment I see something that looks like regret flash in Illya’s eyes as he gazes across the room. But then it passes, and his eyes are the same cool blue they have always been. “Tell her about your mother, and when you’re done ask her about her father.”

“Illya, I.. that is...” I am beginning to understand what he has done in bringing me here, and I owe him my thanks. I don’t know how to tell him.

“They call America the land of opportunity, Leslie.” With one last look he steps into the hallway and closes the door behind him.

“Drinks are ready.” Marion carries the two glasses to the couch and sits down. With one last look at the closed door, I cross the room to join her.

I take the proffered glass and clink it against hers in a toast. “To new beginnings.”


End file.
